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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2005-07-14

And Speaking of Education . . .

with a huge hat tip to Captain Ed

Let's play a game. Guess which Nation-wide advocacy organization has the following list as its Action Agenda for its National Assembly.

1. [Defeated, no description]
2. Fighting Wal-Mart
3. Investigating the positions of financial firms regarding Social Security privatization
4. Adding "multiethnic" and "other" as options on ethnicity questions
5. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the NEA and ATA
6. Forming coalitions to "protect" Social Security
7. Explaining the difference between two different pension plans
8. Requesting an article for their newsletter on "health problems from exposure to fragrance chemicals".
9. Getting outside funding to allow 25 more people to attent the EPA Tools for Schools Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Symposium
10. Creating a workgroup on health care
11. Sponsoring "political training" for Congressional candidates friendly to NEA priorities (see above!)
12. [Defeated, no description]
13. Opposing "billionaire Eli Broad and any other entities to remove elected school boards from cities"
14. Repealing the Social Security offset and explaining the differences between states' approach to Social Security for teachers who move

Now, if you read carefully, there's a couple of hints in there as to what this group is.

Let's see. . .WalMart, Social Security, ethnic issues, Air Quality, health care . . .
This is a tough one. Maybe, MoveOn? No, not nearly angry enough. How about the AARP? Maybe--a little too wide-ranging.

Give up? Yeah, what if I drew your attention to items 5, 11, 13, and 14. They all mention schools or teachers or the NEA . . . maybe some public education advocacy group?

How about the National Education Association? Yep, that's right. The country's leading teachers' union has this as their list of priorities for this summer.

Yep. And nowhere in the first fourteen agenda items are students, or achievement, or, for that matter, SCHOOLS mentioned.

And you wondered what was wrong with education today. . .
Posted by: Michael / 7/14/2005 09:21:00 AM

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